Tuesday, 23 July 2013

This tastes amazing. What's even greater is that it doesn't have ketchup in it. It's pretty tangy. I tasted it before adding the final 3 ingredients in at the end of simmering and I just about knocked myself out. It was a little bit strong. Luckily it tamed down significantly towards the end and just tasted amazing.

I used this as a sauce for pulled pork and it was fabulous. It would also be wonderful I suspect on chicken. I had some extra sauce left over and it was dumped in the crock pot with a roast and the roast tasted pretty good the following day.

Monday, 22 July 2013

These were a success. Like a really, really big success. Usually only some of the more unique things I make, pass the 'would I make this again test?'. This one passed with flying colours and everyone seemed kind of shocked that this slightly bizarre concept could taste so amazing.

Sunday, 21 July 2013

This is a Paula Deen Recipe that is absolutely amazing. In our household, we've always made crisps or crumbles. That's all we've ever known. Throw the fruit in the pan and top with some sugar and oats. That sort of thing. The odd time I'd comment that I wanted to make a cobbler and my Mom would whip out so and so's blackberry cobbler recipe. Fruit on the bottom, biscuit like dumplings on the top. Then one day things changed...

I wanted a cobbler. Something different you know. I made a couple attempts at finding a really good cobbler recipe, but nothing really seemed to be out there. A couple of times I combined a couple and came up with my own doughy topping, but it never was what I was looking for.

The whole time this was happening I kept finding these really odd recipes that were calling for a lot of butter to be melted in the bottom of a pan. Batter added next. Followed by fruit on top. How was this supposed to work? I dismissed them every time. To me this just didn't seem possible. How would you get a perfect layer of fruit on the bottom, when you put it on the top?

Finally one recipe convinced me it might be possible (plus logic that heavier things sink helped out), but the recipes all seemed to look like you had fruit on the bottom (dry, ungooey fruit) and a cake (dry again) on the top. Not what I wanted. So again I passed over these recipes.

Until I decided to trust Paula Deen's recipe. Because if she can't make a good cobbler, I don't know who could. And it was magical. Why did every recipe I found fail to mention that the cakieness on the top is anything but dry? As it moves up through the gooey peaches it gets all these amazing flavours. Then once it arrives at the top it has just the right sugar and butter amounts to caramelize and have an almost candy like coating over the top. All the while, the fruit on the bottom is so syrupy and delicious.

Verdict: Delicious. Amazing. So worth it. When can I make it again?

I didn't have enough peaches on hand (or so I thought). I wanted to double this recipe (wasn't necessary, it puffed up A LOT and almost overflowed the dish). So I used half peaches, half rhubarb (also because I had a lot of rhubarb to get rid of). So I just subbed out half of the peaches for rhubarb. Easy peasy. What I didn't expect to happen was for the rhubarb to completely vanish, and the peaches to stay whole. Of all things. If you were to hold a piece of peach and a piece of rhubarb in your hand, it would seem like a no brainer to say that the peach would dissolve and vanish during cooking. It is just so juicy and soft and moist, whereas the rhubarb is so hard. But that is not what happened. So my fruit layer was very much a white gooey syrup with a few peaches throughout. I can't wait to try this with all peaches though. Can't wait.

Friday, 19 July 2013

Okay, I had to come up with another name for this. There was no way that I was going to be able to drink something called Hippie Juice. There was even less of a chance that the people I was serving this to would drink it if they knew the name of it. So, the name has been changed. It is now Pink Paradise. AKA Your Drink. This is the drink that I'm sure everyone has seen all over Pinterest. Yup, I had to give it a try. So worth it.

This is pretty good and by pretty good I actually mean you could very easily drink way too much of this. We did. In our defence though there was a lot of people we were sharing it with. But we did go through 3 jugs of this in a weeks time. If you use the actual Simply Lemonade you'll get three batches of this drink out of two jugs of lemonade, fyi. Also, I preferred the regular lemonade, to pink lemonade in taste, but the pink lemonade gave it a much nicer colour.

Also, if you're not going to drink this all within a day or two, either don't put the strawberries in, or pull them out and eat them (and watch when you try to stand up. Whew!). Don't leave them in there to sit for more than a day or two because they'll turn and wreck the whole drink. That's too much alcohol going to waste there. So don't do that.

The original recipe used watermelon vodka. I haven't searched everywhere yet, but I'm pretty sure that it's not available in Canada. So hence the Watermelon Liqueur and Vodka split 1:1. The original called for that total volume of the two, just as watermelon vodka. So if you can find it, use 1 1/2 C. of the vodka.

Thursday, 18 July 2013

Sorry, no picture for this one (is one really needed for a brownie anyway? We all know exactly what they look like, or rather, what they are supposed to look like). By the time I realized that this was the exact recipe I was looking for to call my best brownie recipe, the brownie was no longer worthy of being photographed. I mean, I guess I could go and snap a picture right now of the one remaining corner piece, but I think that saying that there is only one piece remaining says a lot more than a picture ever would.

I just wanted a basic brownie recipe. Was that too much to ask for? One that was gooey and fudgey and had very little flour and cakeyness to it. I also didn't want to add anything to it to make it gooey, like marshmallows. I just wanted a brownie. Well I found it!

I looked through the dozens and dozens of brownie recipes I have saved, to come to two conclusions. 1) 99% of the brownie recipes I have saved, all have something special done to them. Oreos, s'mores, rocky road, nutella, etc., and 2) the two recipes that were just plain old brownies, happened to be the exact same recipe. So armed with the knowledge that at least two people found this recipe to be worthwhile and posted it, I set out to make them, and I'm glad I did. It was so good. Like make your teeth hurt sweet, which is absolutely perfect.

I did change up the sugars a bit, like a lot of the reviewers commented they did. Instead of using 3 C. of white sugar, I did half and half of brown and white. I'm sure it would be great any way, but I know this way was delicious.

Wednesday, 17 July 2013

This is another one of those recipes I have copied down from two different spots at two different times and go back to find out they are the same recipe.

I double this recipe and so that means you use two packages of pudding. The recipe calls for vanilla, but I usually don't have two of the same flavours on hand at the same time. So I have ended up making vanilla-lemon one time, and vanilla-chocolate another. Both good, but I think I'll stick with the vanilla-lemon or vanilla-vanilla combo, just because the cookies are supposed to be chocolate chip cookies with a kick. As soon as you add the chocolate pudding, it makes them look like you've added cocoa to them, and in my eyes, that's a totally different cookie.

It's taken me awhile to type this up, and I'm realizing I didn't mark down how many cookies this made (it was a lot) or how much chocolate chips I added. Oops. The original recipe calls for a 12 oz bag of chips, so I'll just put that, but because I scoop from the Costco size box, I always measure in cups not bags. So I'm guessing it was somewhere between 1 and 2 cups, but that's completely dependent on chocolate preference, etc. Just do what you want. I'm also realizing that there is no salt in this recipe. Which is really strange. Hmm

Tuesday, 16 July 2013

I don't usually scale down recipes. This one I had to. I made a quarter of the batch. Who needs 4 cups of dressing when it has no preservatives in it, and it's simple enough to make again 2-3 days down the road?

This was great. It didn't separate like most vinaigrettes do (further reading informs me that the honey is the trick). It's a wonderful pink colour and looks really great on your salads, and it's way too easy to warrant buying the expensive salad dressings at the grocery store.

Monday, 15 July 2013

These didn't exactly taste like Cheeze Its (for those Americans out there) and Cheese Nips (for the Canadians). They tasted better. Different, but oh so much better. Let's just say the batch almost didn't have a chance to cool and leave it at that. Plus, there is only five ingredients and they are pretty darn simple to make (but they do take a bit of time to chill and cut, but nothing hard about that).

One thing for certain, roll them thin. Like really thin. The ones that worked the best for me were the ones that I could see the colour of the countertop underneath them coming through. They puff up. So unless you want little cracker cubes, roll them thin. I though I had them thin enough, I didn't. Not that it made them taste any worse. They just weren't as crunchy right out of the oven.

Friday, 5 July 2013

As soon as I saw this recipe I knew I had to try it. But donuts aren't something we eat a lot of and so I was waiting for the right opportunity to make them. I was really intrigued by the idea and finally I got the chance to try them.

I'm going to critique these because I really like the idea of them, but the donut itself really did nothing for me. The margarita curd filling was absolutely amazing and I am trying to think of something else to make that would use it because it is so great. The donut dough portion was not the right thing for this amazing curd.

I've never tried making donuts before. I don't deep fry anything and so the idea of a baked donut intrigued me. Unfortunately, this baked donut tasted a lot like a dinner bun. They looked beautiful and very much like a donut, but when you bit into them they were just like eating bread. I don't know if this is how all baked donuts turn out, or if this was just because of the recipe.

The other problem with this was I made these and then put them in a container and carted them around for eating the next day. A mistake. I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea. You'd never eat a bought donut the next day. They sweat when stored in a container or even a paper bag and they aren't good. Basically, I ended up throwing out almost a dozen and a half donuts because of this mistake.

I would like to try them again, but with a different donut dough. I'll have to do a bit of research because I'm really not at all familiar with donuts and then maybe you'll hear back from me some day. The one good thing about this recipe though was that you did not need to deep fry them, and you didn't need one of the fancy donut pans.

Directions

Donuts

~Combine all ingredients of the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix to combine and then knead for 5 minutes. If dough is very sticky, increase flour until it forms a nice ball of dough.

~Place dough in an oiled bowl and cover with an oiled piece of plastic wrap and a towel and place in a warm spot and allow to rise to double it's size (1 hour) or place in a cool spot and allow to rise overnight.

~Preheat oven to 350 F.

~Roll dough out onto a floured surface with a floured rolling pin to about a 1/4 inch in thickness.

Thursday, 4 July 2013

Pancakes have really been important for us in our house. So much so that I almost can't appreciate them because I've eaten them for dinner too many times. While most households have soup and grilled cheese, a hot dog, order a pizza or pick up a burger when there is no food in the house, we haven't been able to do that because of dietary restrictions. So, enter the pancakes.

While we make waffles from scratch ALWAYS! Pancakes have been a different story. Probably partly because we make them for dinner when we are in a hurry or because we make them up the cabin (the first day there we always have pancakes) and we don't have tubs of flour, etc. sitting up there. It's just easier to take a box mix.

Now for us, pancakes aren't thin little white things that are loonie size and flavourless. Pancakes are supposed to be thick and filling and have a lot of flavour. We achieve this with the pancake mix (there is only one brand we're allowed to buy and one type in that brand) by always adding the eggs, oil and milk to it. Not just the water that some mixes brag you can get away with doing. Not worth it.

But we have to sub out the milk for soy milk. Vanilla soy milk to be precise, and wow! The vanilla adds so much flavour and the thicker soy milk makes the pancakes puff up all that much more. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but one time one of the neighbourhood boys stumbled and said these were better than his mom's (and they were from a box mix). Big oops. But they are great.

Why I'm saying all this is because we ran out of pancake mix. All available boxes had migrated up to the cabin and never returned. I suggested we just make some from scratch and that idea was shot down. I guess the recipe that had been used before for scratch wasn't so good and it really flopped. This recipe did not. They were thick and amazing and very similar to the famous mix pancakes we've always made. I think we may have just cured the box pancake mix obsession in this house, because I've been asked 'have you printed out that pancake recipe.' Success!

This recipe was very similar to what we are used to, it just lacked a bit of sweetness, but it didn't lack flavour. So not a big deal. Later in the afternoon after making them for breakfast I commented about this lack of sweetness and I hadn't been doing the measuring of ingredients. The one that was told me there was no sugar in this recipe. I pulled up the recipe and noticed that there was in fact sugar. What I'm trying to say is these are still very good pancakes without the sugar. It's not necessary. I think we'll try them with some of the sugar next time, but we probably won't use the whole amount I'm going to list because really, they were just fine without and who wants to add sugar if it's not necessary?

Note to myself: TRIPLE THIS RECIPE FOR 4 PEOPLE & A DOG if you don't want to just squeak by with barely enough batter. Doubling was the perfect amount if you scrapped the bowl, but we like to have a bit more wiggle room if people want an extra one. And yes, the dog gets a pancake. Mind you it's probably more blueberries than pancake, but it's still a problem because she's on grain free kibble because of allergies, but she ends up wanting pancakes. Someone gave a piece to her once and now she's hooked. You can't eat your pancakes and not give her one small one and have a clean conscience. She'll make sure of that.

Wednesday, 3 July 2013

This is about the simplest thing you could ever hope to make. I always love grilled cheeses. Now I know most people thing that means a cheese sandwich (two pieces of bread around a centre of cheese) that has been fried up in a pan. Yeah, that is a grilled cheese, but that is a lot of work. What I'm talking about is a grilled cheese under the broiler. One piece of bread with cheese broiled on top until it is bubbly and potentially going crunchy (especially good if using mozzarella cheese because it gets this beautiful golden, crispy top on it that has amazing flavour). But it's not exactly the healthiest thing. Just a hunk of bread and cheese. So I decided to try this.

I kind of stumbled upon it by accident. I had thrown a tortilla into the oven with some stuff on it to heat it up and the tortilla bypassed heating up and went straight to being crispy in the time it took for the toppings to warm up. I ended up having made my own tortilla chips. What was even better was I have just recently found a brand of wraps that uses a half flour, half corn mix, so you get the best of both worlds. The flexibility and agility of a flour tortilla, and the amazing flavour of a corn one. So, it tasted pretty good and I just about dumbed the toppings off of this wrap so I could eat the tortilla all by itself with some salsa.

So the next day I decided to just do a tortilla under the broiler but as I was about to put it in the oven I had another idea. I always love things with a fine sprinkling of cheese that has been baked until it is crispy (like a pizza pretzel or cheese stick), so I decided to grate a very small amount of cheese over top of the wrap and presto, I had greatness. The key here is to have minimal cheese. You want just enough to get the flavour of some crispy cheese, but too much and you will get a lot of grease coming out of the cheese which will prevent the cheese and the tortilla from crispy up. If in doubt, use less. These are basically just nachos but using a soft tortilla instead of tortilla chips. Same difference, it just tastes really good. It's almost too easy to be posting, but I'm posting it for my benefit so I can remember it and make it again.

Serves 1

Ingredients

1 Flour & Corn Tortilla (I'm sure either or would work also)

1/8-1/4 C. Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Salsa

Directions

~Place oven on broil.

~Sprinkle grated cheese over one side of a tortilla.

~Broil until cheese has bubbled and the tortilla is crispy. 1-2 minutes. But make sure to watch it closely as it can burn very quickly.

Tuesday, 2 July 2013

I finally bought coconut oil. I've heard 'wonderful' things about it (that I can't help but roll my eyes at) but we'll see. I really like it as a lotion though. Just by itself. No perfumes, no chemicals, just coconut oil. It smells amazing and it leaves your skin feeling great. I'm definitely going to cook with it. But I won't be taking x number of tablespoons of it a day or whatever advocates of it are currently doing. It is still a fat. Maybe it is a better fat, but that doesn't mean you can consume it without consequences. Everything in moderation. So I will be using it as a butter substitute for some things. Which is a good thing, because I don't actually use butter because of it being a dairy product. So I'm always using margarine which isn't real in the slightest.

First up on the coconut oil recipes is this granola. Very tasty. The batch isn't going to last very long I don't think. But it is a little sweet, not too sweet but if you don't like sweet granola then it would seem sweet. But that may just be because I only had sweetened coconut on hand, so that might play into it.

Monday, 1 July 2013

I think I have done it! I have finally tracked down the best chewy chocolate chip cookie out there. They look beautiful, they are thick (there is a trick I've never tried before and it worked perfectly) and they have almost too much chocolate in them. I did say almost.

This recipe utilizes cornstarch, which is something I have tried before and it does make them chewier. Up until today, I thought that this recipe was my favourite chocolate chip cookie. When I actually compare the recipe it is pretty much identical except for a few small tweaks. I guess I know what ratio of ingredients I like in my cookies. One of these being, I like more brown sugar to white sugar as it gives it a fuller flavour in my eyes.

But, this wasn't the only thing different than other cookies out there. It used melted butter and an extra egg yolk which is new to me for cookie recipes. I was very intrigued from the very beginning when I saw this recipe and knew I had to give it a go.

All that aside, what is even more great is that they turned out to be really thick and they were dense and almost cakey. I followed the instructions that said to roll the dough into balls and make them slightly taller than they are wide. So when they bake they stay thick. I rolled the dough into a ball in my hands and then just gave the ball a quick one sided roll between my hands again to form it into more of a cylinder. I then placed it on the cookie sheet and pushed it down a bit from the top so it would have a flat bottom and not roll onto its side during transportation over to the oven. It worked beautifully. I made these a second time though and just rolled them into a normal ball, and the cookies still turned out incredibly thick as well, they just didn't have that little extra oomph. So either way really works.

The only thing I did differently from the original recipe is, like always, I increased the amount of vanilla.

One mistake I did make was on my 3rd cookie sheet I put in the oven (I had made a double batch) I had two extra cookie dough balls. Not wanting to deal with having to clean up one of my already used sheets for just 2 cookies I decided to rearrange and try to cram these extras onto the sheet. Unfortunately, my 3rd cookie sheet is the smaller of them all and it was already crammed to begin with. When I pulled them out of the oven it looked like I had make chocolate chip cookie monkey bread. It all tasted the same, but as a warning, because these are rolled taller, they appear like you can squish them onto a cookie sheet because they don't take up as much of a footprint when unbaked. Just remember that they do spread (even though they still are thick), so watch for that.

Warning, if you like crunchy, well baked cookies stay away. You've been warned.